


To Be Thankful

by misha_collins_butt



Series: And the Stars Will Fade and the Moon Will Fall but Please Stay With Me Tonight [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Destiel - Freeform, Family, Fluff, Gen, I wrote this a long time ago, I'm nostalgic, Like around the time negation started being a problem, M/M, Ohana, Sabriel - Freeform, Sambriel?, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Thanksgiving project for the boys, Winchesters - Freeform, be nice, because they celebrate it, email format, even if I don't, i guess that's the official name lol, idk - Freeform, metatron not negation wtf, pre-emptive depression about the end of SPN, so like, video diaries, video diary, wish there was a way to edit individual tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 07:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20205814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misha_collins_butt/pseuds/misha_collins_butt
Summary: Month of November, 2013





	To Be Thankful

**Author's Note:**

> This is a VERY old one that I've been meaning to post for AGES but I just got caught up in other pretty things and ideas and yeah. Here it is. It's like, meant to be in the format of an email, from Sam to himself.

_From: Sammy83@mailboxer.com_

_Subject: For Safe Keeping_

_Attachment: PB14902.jpg_

_Video-file_

_Label: Dean_

_Length: 2 minutes_

This family we got. It's...broken. Broke down, beat, little strange. We lost members. Gained a few. We're not all there, but when ya think about it...real hard...we got each other, the remaining few, and that's...that's all that matters. And we might not, ya know, have...a roof over our heads or a place to go all the time. Food to eat and clothes to choose from and people to meet and money to spend. But, I think long as I got my rock an' roll and baby at my hands, long as Sam got his dumb research and that genius friggin brain a' his, long as Cas got that goofy smile and that angel blade, and long as Gabe got a penchant for bein' annoying as hell...I think we'll be okay. We'll be okay.

A-and yeah, we...we might settle down one day, in a neighbourhood where nobody knows our names and nobody asks questions...where we paint the walls with salt and pretend we're all normal - 'ust two brothers and their weird friend who don't seem to understand much, takes things a little too literally, and their candy loving, platypus creating giant child. Live out our days cookin' breakfast on a stove and drinkin' beers on the front porch with a couple cats...maybe a dog...for Sammy...and ignoring our past, replacin' the guilt in our hands with lawnmowers and screwdrivers. Or we might, ya know...we might go down fightin', guns wrapped in fingers that can't seem to stay off the trigger...'n brave little looks on our faces. 

And there's miles a' road ahead of us, plenty...plenty a' time, opportunities to prove that...that we love each other, that...w-we all belong to each other and we don't need nothing but ourselves. But, I think, too, that, no matter which way we go out, no matter what, ya know, long as we got each other, we'll...we'll make it through. Long as we got each other, we got a home. So...so yeah, we're a family, broken as we are...we're a family and...and we'll be okay...we'll be okay.

_Attachment: PB14903.jpg_

_Video-file_

_Label: Sam_

_Length: 7 minutes_

There's these teardrops on our pages, blood spattered between the words and there's scars 'nd...and pain written into our skin but...but I think...I think we'll all die happy. Dean's got the Impala, Cas, his music. Cas has the angel blade, and Dean. And his cats. Gabe has...well, Gabe has anything he could want but, for some reason, he chose me, so he has my heart. And I have...I have all of them, as annoying as they can get. 

And I think...I think those are the best parts, the ones where we expose our faults, give in to our anger and-and our sadness, and reach into ourselves and pull out the-the bad and the good and the happy and the mad and...and it all comes together and we show the people we love most who we really are and...well, we're all broken, whether that be in soul or heart or brain or flesh. We're all broken, and we've discovered we don't need time to heal, because we all heal each other. 

We're raw and aching and half-dead and we...we cry a lot more than we used to...even Gabe. I...I once found him...curled over himself on the bathroom floor with...tears just pouring out of his eyes. And he-he didn't have to say anything because...what use was there? I already understood. So, yeah, we're all broken. Some of us more than others. But I can tell you now that, as long as we all have each other, it doesn't matter. We keep each other sane, we mop up the blood on our papers and dry the tears that have obscured our words and we...we re-assure each other of our stories. We make sure that we haven't decided to rip out any pages, or give up on the book halfway through. 

We thought we knew how we were gonna end. We don't. But as long we're all together - whether it be in one piece or completely shattered - as long as we each have each other, it won't matter how it ends. It doesn't matter. I know how I want to end, of course, but I think as long as I still have these three idiots I call my family...I could live with whatever it comes down to. 

We're broken, scarred, mangled, twisted and guilty and torn down and awful and there are guts on our hands and the names of every person we've ever killed, directly or by some sort of domino effect, are written into our very bones, the faces of the people we loved and lost are nothing more than tears in our souls, but...we are family. And that's...that's what matters, in the end. And, yeah, it's important to know, to remember, our mistakes; that we've fallen, from heaven to earth, and earth to hell. That we've murdered, killed, ruthlessly, without thought. That we've started and ended an apocolypse or two and that we've ruined peoples' lives in order to save them. 

And those things...they make us who we are, really. But they don't...they don't define us and they don't matter in comparison to who we are as a family. As a family, we're still broken, there are still cracks in the way we deal with each other and the way we deal with things as a team. But we _are_...family. And that's always been the only thing that matters. The only thing.

_Attachment: PB14904.jpg_

_Video-file_

_Label: Cas_

_Length: 6 minutes_

Humans...have always seemed like such simple creatures and I-I guess I've never quite understood...these little human things that I've always considered so silly. I mean, talking to a camera about exactly what I'm thinking has never really seemed relevant to my life. 

But I've been human. I've seen the face of humanity raveled up into two minuscule creatures who seem to endlessly throw themselves in the line of fire...who seem to believe the survival of the entire human race depends on them. I find that amusing. B-but very true, in most cases. I've seen things that I...never thought possible, even as an angel. When I...became human, I was inexcusably stupid. I think I can understand why. I was lost and scared. And I've forgiven and been forgiven for that time and I think I understand all these things I once thought inane and vapid. 

Sam and Dean have shown me what it really means to be a family. In heaven, I...I never really had a family, never really truly felt like I belonged. Gabriel was and still is the only brother I've ever felt particularly akin with. I couldn't tell you why...possibly because he never felt like he belonged there either. And when he died-when we thought he died, I...well, that's another story, and a faraway one, one which I would much rather keep locked up. Especially now that I have him back.

But the point is, as much as I still have to learn, I...I see what it is to have a family, to love without condition. Not to say I never loved anyone in heaven - for obvious reasons, I was programmed to love my siblings, but there was never actually any real emotion there. Here, with...with Gabe and the brothers...with Dean...I feel like I know what that real emotion looks like. Before I fell - hell, before I met these two incredible men - all emotion, any idea of humanity and human nature and what it was to feel...it all escaped me, my forever unfeeling mind that refused to acknowledge how I might end up if I stuck it out with the Winchesters. 

But the brothers...I mean, for a while now, they've been calling us - all four of us - a family. And I think it's just amazing, absolutely awe-inspiring how anyone could possibly forgive and care and love that much to consider me, of all people, part of their family. I used to think too much of myself, and now I don't think much of anything, but, disregarding my own bias, if I were to really stand back and...look at the situation, I'd have to say that, to accept me, someone who has lied and deceived and killed and hidden and disappeared and tortured and abandoned...to consider me a part of their family is a mind-blowing feat of the human capacity to trust and love. 

Though, I suppose, they're at fault for many things as well. They've killed, they've done things that I think even my father would highly disapprove of. But forgiveness seems to be a given with these two. And they've forgiven me. They've forgiven me, sad and washed up and lonely and broken. We're all...broken...and they've given me a family. They are my family. My broken family. So, I think I don't care how I've ended up. How I still may end up. Because, broken though we may be, we are ostensibly, inexorably, and unequivocally...a family. And no one, not an angel in heaven or a demon in hell or a monster in purgatory or a human on the face of the earth, could possiblytake that away from me. Not me. Not ever.

_Attachment: PB14905.jpg_

_Video-file_

_Label: LOKI!! lol just kidding it's Gabe_

_Length: 4 minutes_

I haven't been here long enough to...I mean, I feel a little too...new to this situation to really consider myself part of that silly little dysfunctional mess they insist on calling a family. And...I-I guess I don't know what the point of this whole exercise is but Sam told us it would help so...I can't argue with that, I mean, c'mon, it's Sam, with his damn puppy eyes and sometimes I hate him for that. But I abandoned him...even though I still loved him. He's forgiven me. For leaving him, for-for killing Dean so many times, for plopping him and that damn brother of his into TvLand. Man, that was my favourite...and for one person to have...so much forgiveness inside of them is completely beyond me but...he did forgive me. And he did let me kiss him finally. I don't know maybe I scared him with the whole 'faking my death' thing.

So, now, Sam insists that I'm part of the family. Dean wasn't so quick to jump in on that...neither was Cas but he was definitely more lenient and I think, at this point he'd rather have me than not. I-I don't do...love...so well. I mean, I loved Cas. Still do, obviously, he's my brother and I owe him so much. I left him in heaven, when he was just little, to fend for himself because I'm selfish...because I couldn't handle the fighting, the-the shame of being an angel. And then...I left Sam, in the worst way and I...and I'm still part of their family.

Quite frankly, I never wanted to be part of another family, not after heaven, but now I am. And I hate to admit it, but Dean isn't so bad. I have to thank him, really. He forgave me, and that's an amazing act of humanity when you consider how much of an insufferably stubborn jackass he is. He took me in, let me stay, though I think that was mostly for Sam's sake. And he takes good care of Cas, which I can't mad about. To protect the people I love has always been an important thing to me and when I wasn't there, Dean was. He took care of Cas when I couldn't, when I forgot to.

I hate myself for that...I hate that I'm...well, I think I'm a lot like him. We both love Cas and Sam, we both avoid talking about our feelings and push it all down with things that are bad for us. We both feel incredibly indebted to...a lot of people. To the world. And we're both broken. And we're all broken. And I think that's a really stupid reason to consider each other family but, when it comes down to it, it's not the only reason we've got.

And it's...I mean, we...ya know, I'm no good with words, feelings, knowing the right thing to say. I've hidden too long and too much to really...to say that I still feel the things I used to in the same way that used to. But I can say for a fact that I feel loved - truly loved - for probably the first time in my life, and...again, for the first time in my life, I think I can finally admit that I do love people. Three people, specifically. Yes, even Dean. 

And to...to be able to do that, after all these years, and to know these two boys and this fallen angel are the reason I can do that...it says something about them. And I think, if I were to have to choose any family...it would be them. For reasons I...I can't find it in myself to admit. So...so, yeah. Mych as I hate to admit...they are my family...even Dean. Even him.

**Author's Note:**

> Also if you're wondering about the "label" of the last one, yes, Gabe named it himself lmao


End file.
